My language is not my language. This is why it is called my language. A poetry reading and conversation about translingualism and translation with Eugene Ostashevsky.

Is there a place in literature for not purifying “the dialect of the tribe”? What is the relationship between translation and language mixing—are they allies or enemies? How do the shapes and sounds of words affect their meanings? This is an opportunity to hear Ostashevsky read from his work and to discuss translingualism and translation.

Eugene Ostashevsky, a poet who was born in the USSR, grew up in the US, and now lives mainly in Germany, will read and discuss his creative and theoretical work on translingualism.

Ostashevsky is the author of The Feeling Sonnets (Carcanet, 2022), a poetry collection that Jacqueline Saphra described as an “immense and multilingual opus of philosophy, language, pun and the absurd” and Gwyneth Lewis called “an exhilarating and witty… tour de force.” He is also, more recently, the author of Alphabet Soup: The Translingual Sayings of Emma and Eva as Recorded by Their Father, a study of the language-mixing of his growing daughters. An acclaimed translator working with extreme poetry from the historical avant-garde to today, he is the editor of sdvig, a book series devoted to translingual experimentation, for Helsinki’s Rab-Rab Press. His work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Paris Review, and Best American Poetry and The Forward Book of Poetry, and has been recognised with the National Translation Award (US), the City of Münster International Poetry Prize (DE), the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD fellowship (DE), and other prizes.

The talk will start at 14:00 with light refreshments to follow. For online attendees, please register via Microsoft Forms to receive the link.

This event is sponsored by Modern Languages and is open to anyone with an interest in bilingualism, poetry, translation, and language mixing.